Trolltech today announced the start of the Qtopia Greenphone Developer Challenge, a global contest for innovative development of Linux-based mobile phone applications. Entrants can create their applications using either the community or commercial version of Qtopia Phone Edition.

Leading Asterisk developer Digium Inc. has snagged a licensing deal with a subsidiary of Japanese telco giant NTT in what it sees as a major breakthrough for the open-source PBX system in that critical market.

Many years ago when this project was first started, it was called "GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger." AOL naturally complained, and Mark Spencer changed the name to "Gaim." AOL was appeased, and no one really ever heard of it because there were very few users back then.

After a long, and unfortunately secret debate, they settled on the name "Pidgin" for gaim itself, "libpurple" for libgaim (which, as of 2.0.0 beta6, exists), and "Finch" for gaim-text.

The Linux community is assaulting the mobile phone environment with a two-pronged attack that focuses on commercial operating system solutions and real-time operating system (RTOS) replacement. In a new study, ABI Research forecasts that by 2012, more than 127 million devices will be enabled with a commercial Linux OS, up from 8.1 million in 2007. Additionally, device shipments that incorporate Linux as an RTOS replacement are set to grow to more than 76 million units in 2012, up from nearly zero in 2007.

Nextel's iDen network isn't dead, Motorola says. To prove that they're still innovating in iDen phones, they showed a surprise new handset today at CTIA: the i876, the first iDen phone based on Motorola's new Linux/Java platform.

Since the earliest days, free software and its representatives on earth have been the subject of attacks that serve to question the originality, authenticity, authorship, identity and parentage of the software - but the loose communities (if such they are) of hackers, users, developers and proponents of GNU, Linux and free software have always been quick to respond, as Stallman observes in his history of the GNU project.

Trolltech announced that Skype, the global internet communications company, has chosen Trolltech’s Qtopia as the preferred platform for connecting the Skype user interface to the operating system in Skype Certified WiFi handsets and a variety of other devices that deliver a Skype experience.